Can someone recommend a reasonably priced large-size studio kit for photographing furniture? I'm assuming I need the large backdrops (10x20 seems to be a common size). Are the "cheap" kits (e.g. Cowboy Studio or ePhoto) worth considering? I want to take good, but not necessarily great, photos of my husband's woodworking products. I don't plan to ever use the studio for anyone else.
Based on experience, I bet you can take some really remarkable photos with no "studio" gear at all. I'll get to the studio gear recommendations in a moment anyway, but first I'd like to make a case for the simple approach. It's often better. Here goes:
Pick a large window in your house, then cover it with a white bed sheet. That will give you a larger "soft box" than you can buy and still afford to feed your family. For emergency backdrops while on the road, we often buy cheap king-sized velour blankets. They come in an amazing array of colors, and when you adjust the DOF of your camera to suit your tastes, provide amazing results. Need a little fill light? Use sheets of the pillowed (like bubble wrap) mylar (like silver aluminum foil) insulating wrap from the hardware store. It comes in rolls and you can buy it by the foot for little money in 3' and 4' widths. Arrange one of these on either side of your furniture and use them to bounce light and everything from filling shadows to adding highlights. You can get everything you need for well under $100, and probably under $50.
If you follow how those bits of "studio" gear will be used, then you understand what you will need if you buy the real thing. The real studio gear will only be trying to duplicate those effects using electric light rather than natural light. And because it comes from a photo store, it's probably going to cost you well over $500, and more likely over $1000. I recommend a 2-light strobe set of not less than 1000 w/s (watt/seconds) per light that includes the light stands. You'll need a large soft box for one of the lights, and a snood, barn door or gobos for the other. You can probably find a really decent kit of two lights with stands for under $1,000, but you'll spend some real money for the large softbox. I don't know what snoods, barn doors and gobos cost these days, but you can probably get any of them for under $100. We get virtually all our backdrops from Denny and prices can run the full gamut, depending on what you want. When starting out we bought our first studio gear from Calumet because they have the largest variety and were so helpful on the phone. They're still the most helpful, and any time we call they put someone on the phone who actually uses the gear, rather than the typical minimum-wage phone clone.
Posted by Carol Hyman on January 2, 2011 at 12:19 PM
Hank, What a neat idea! I have an old soft worn king sheet from long ago. Very faded beige. That a great idea to cover a window with it.
Thanks,
Carol
Posted by Kent Staubus on January 2, 2011 at 1:31 PM
First try the natural light that Hank suggested. If you still think lights will be worth the money, stay away from Cowboy Studios etc. They are cheap lights and when they break you won't be able to get parts. Buy used Alien Bee B800 lights on eBay or something.
Another series of thoughts occur to me Michele, but bear with me if you already know them.
Using natural light such as I suggest for simplicity engenders long exposures, especially with small apertures when you are chasing DOF. That spells using a tripod and cable release on your camera. Studio lights will let you get around using the tripod, but you'll truly be happier with it even then due to composition and point-of-view adjustments.
Beware of getting close and using wide angle lenses. That can produce maddening distortion which will be painfully obvious with any subject having lots of straight lines, such as furniture. It's much better to shoot somewhere that allows you to back off and use a longer lens. Zooms are especially helpful for framing, as most rooms aren't long enough (or your collection of fixed-focal-length lenses extensive enough) to position yourself in just the right spot for the comp you want. The main shooting room in our studio is 22 feet long, and for larger products such as furniture I'm often standing at one end with the subject at the far end. If the studio was longer, I'd use all of it too!
One of the big reasons for that large "soft box" is to increase the size of your light source, which gives you better control of reflections and hot spots on reflective subjects such as furniture. If you decide to go with the studio lights, a work-around to avoid buying a huge soft box is the self-same white sheet I recommend for a window covering. We're back to space issues, but the sheet will work best if you position the light well back from it, even if that means getting the sheet really close to your subject, but still out of frame. In fact having the sheet close to your subject is likely to give the most uniform light and pleasing results, even if that means putting the furniture close to your window and the sheet covering when using natural light.
I thought again about my recommendation of the silver insulating wrap for reflectors. That will be fine if in fact you want distinct highlights. But if you want more uniform light, a second sheet hung opposite your light source will serve as a soft reflector and limit glaring reflections while helping fill shadows.
This all may sound complicated, but once you have the light/reflection issues corralled, the shooting is really easy, almost as simple as using a Xerox machine. Just position your subject and shoot, which can be really handy when you have to shoot a selection of products in identical light.
Discussion
4 repliesThanks in advance for your advice.
Michele Williams
Pick a large window in your house, then cover it with a white bed sheet. That will give you a larger "soft box" than you can buy and still afford to feed your family. For emergency backdrops while on the road, we often buy cheap king-sized velour blankets. They come in an amazing array of colors, and when you adjust the DOF of your camera to suit your tastes, provide amazing results. Need a little fill light? Use sheets of the pillowed (like bubble wrap) mylar (like silver aluminum foil) insulating wrap from the hardware store. It comes in rolls and you can buy it by the foot for little money in 3' and 4' widths. Arrange one of these on either side of your furniture and use them to bounce light and everything from filling shadows to adding highlights. You can get everything you need for well under $100, and probably under $50.
If you follow how those bits of "studio" gear will be used, then you understand what you will need if you buy the real thing. The real studio gear will only be trying to duplicate those effects using electric light rather than natural light. And because it comes from a photo store, it's probably going to cost you well over $500, and more likely over $1000. I recommend a 2-light strobe set of not less than 1000 w/s (watt/seconds) per light that includes the light stands. You'll need a large soft box for one of the lights, and a snood, barn door or gobos for the other. You can probably find a really decent kit of two lights with stands for under $1,000, but you'll spend some real money for the large softbox. I don't know what snoods, barn doors and gobos cost these days, but you can probably get any of them for under $100. We get virtually all our backdrops from Denny and prices can run the full gamut, depending on what you want. When starting out we bought our first studio gear from Calumet because they have the largest variety and were so helpful on the phone. They're still the most helpful, and any time we call they put someone on the phone who actually uses the gear, rather than the typical minimum-wage phone clone.
Thanks,
Carol
Kent in SD
Using natural light such as I suggest for simplicity engenders long exposures, especially with small apertures when you are chasing DOF. That spells using a tripod and cable release on your camera. Studio lights will let you get around using the tripod, but you'll truly be happier with it even then due to composition and point-of-view adjustments.
Beware of getting close and using wide angle lenses. That can produce maddening distortion which will be painfully obvious with any subject having lots of straight lines, such as furniture. It's much better to shoot somewhere that allows you to back off and use a longer lens. Zooms are especially helpful for framing, as most rooms aren't long enough (or your collection of fixed-focal-length lenses extensive enough) to position yourself in just the right spot for the comp you want. The main shooting room in our studio is 22 feet long, and for larger products such as furniture I'm often standing at one end with the subject at the far end. If the studio was longer, I'd use all of it too!
One of the big reasons for that large "soft box" is to increase the size of your light source, which gives you better control of reflections and hot spots on reflective subjects such as furniture. If you decide to go with the studio lights, a work-around to avoid buying a huge soft box is the self-same white sheet I recommend for a window covering. We're back to space issues, but the sheet will work best if you position the light well back from it, even if that means getting the sheet really close to your subject, but still out of frame. In fact having the sheet close to your subject is likely to give the most uniform light and pleasing results, even if that means putting the furniture close to your window and the sheet covering when using natural light.
I thought again about my recommendation of the silver insulating wrap for reflectors. That will be fine if in fact you want distinct highlights. But if you want more uniform light, a second sheet hung opposite your light source will serve as a soft reflector and limit glaring reflections while helping fill shadows.
This all may sound complicated, but once you have the light/reflection issues corralled, the shooting is really easy, almost as simple as using a Xerox machine. Just position your subject and shoot, which can be really handy when you have to shoot a selection of products in identical light.